In the beginning of the semester, of this class, I was not excited about having to take it because it was a composition course,and I didn't think it was going to be as challenging as it was. Reading Deep Economy was the icing on the cake. I didn't particularly like the book and it had a huge affect on my negative thought of the class. We basically had to turn a paper in just about every class period to reflect on assigned readings of the book. Then, preparing for a bigger writing assignment, we were basically told to just forget anything we ever learned in high school about writing because it wasn't right. Then I really had no idea what to think about the class.
As we were assigned bigger writing assignments, with that in mind I had no idea on how I was going to pass the class. We were taught many ways to go about writing. One way was to wallow in complexity. This had a huge affect on me because it was something I had never heard of, yet it was helping me. I helped me greatly when writing my reflection of happiness. I thought, not only, about my happiness, but the happiness of others, and what it actually takes to be happy and developed what I thought to be one of my best papers I had ever written. We were also taught how to make strong, effective thesis statements. I've learned that when composing a thesis statement, there is always two sides to an argument and whichever side you chose, you have to strongly support you decision.
The image analysis paper was somewhat difficult. The assignment was to reflect advertisement and my images weren't exactly of products trying to be sold. I had done image analyzing before and thought that it was going to somewhat be easy. I chose to images reflecting something I felt strongly about and went about writing my paper that way. Although, my image analysis essay wasn't about a product being sold, it reflected advertisement, and I learned many things about advertisement when writing my essay. The purpose of advertising any product, idea, or thought is to capture the attention of a selected audience, holding their attention, and persuading them to do whatever it is that hoped for them to do.
The synthesis essay was amognst the hardest. When it was assigned I had missed class, so when we were to work in our synthesis response groups I was completely lost. I had not picked a topic and was sort of forced into a group. I had no idea how I was going to write about something I hadn't even got a chance to develop an opinion about. Not knowing where to begin, I chose two readings on education and developed my own opinions on each of them and developed a writing on which I felt was good writing. The basis of my synthesis essay was to tie education into home and I felt as though I had done a good job doing so. Reflecting what I've learned from synthesis brought to my attention that my desicion to make this the point of my essay totally goes well with the fact that the Themed Learning Community I'm in is "There's No Place Like Home," tieing education to home.
As the semester came to an end, I checked repeatedly on the grades in which I received on all the work I had done, to find out that a lot of it didn't even count towards my course grade. That was kind of disappointing because the thought of it being all for nothing came to mind. Reflecting on what I've learned from this class, I now realize that writing all those papers helped to fully develop my writing. I've also realized that the structure of how to write a paper doesn't work well for everyone. In class, Keith stressed how important it was to plan and organize before attempting to even write a paper, but this just didn't work for me. Anytime I had to write a paper I went about it by thinking about the topic and just writing whatever came to mind. I would write in paragraph style and edit the paper by adding and deleting things as I went back over my writing. This may not be the best way, but this is the only way I feel I can do my best. Having to preplan a paper and organize it by taking baby steps doesn't help to develop my writing with its full potential. Overall, W131 is a good course and I feel as though it has helped me become a better writer, even if not in ways it was structured to.
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